The U.S. military struck three facilities in Iraq and two anti-ship missiles in Yemen operated by Iranian-backed militias that have attacked U.S. personnel and ships in the region as the United States tries to keep the Israel-Hamas war from spilling over into a wider conflict.
Both the strikes in Iraq and Yemen late on Tuesday targeted sites that the U.S. has said are involved in the attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and were threatening U.S. military and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the strikes in Iraq were at the direction of President Joe Biden and targeted facilities used by the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq.
“These precision strikes are in direct response to a series of escalatory attacks against U.S. and Coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias,” Austin said. Those strikes hit militia facilities in Jurf al-Sakhar, which is south of Baghdad, al-Qaim and another unnamed site in western Iraq, two U.S. officials said.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the strikes “blatantly violate Iraq’s sovereignty” and contribute to an “irresponsible escalation,” according to a statement from his office. The statement, signed by military spokesman Yahya Rasool, said Iraq considers the strikes “hostile acts” and is taking measures to protect the lives of Iraqis.
The U.S. Central Command announced it had also struck two anti-ship missiles belonging to the Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels that were being prepared for launch and were aimed at the southern part of the Red Sea.
“U.S. forces identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and determined that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the U.S. Navy ships in the region,” Central Command said.
Both fronts — land attacks in Iraq and Syria, and sea attacks originating from Yemen — have seen a significant uptick in launches and counterstrikes over the last few days.
The U.S. strikes on the Kataib Hezbollah sites in Iraq came hours after the U.S. said militiamen fired two one-way attack drones at al-Asad Air Base, injuring U.S. service members and damaging infrastructure. And they followed the militia’s most serious attack this year on the air base, when it launched multiple ballistic missiles on Saturday.
U.S. Central Command said it targeted Kataib Hezbollah headquarters, storage, and training locations for rocket, missile, and one-way attack drone capabilities.
In the drone attacks against al-Asad earlier Tuesday, U.S. defenses were able to intercept the first drone but it crashed on base while the second drone hit the base, U.S. officials said. Injuries, including traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation, were reported to be minor. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not been announced publicly.
On both fronts, the Iranian-backed militias have employed ballistic missiles to target U.S. bases and ships, which marks an escalation, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specializes in Iran.
The militias have typically used drones and rockets to attack. Tehran supplied Shiite militias in Iraq with short-range and close-range ballistic missiles in 2019, Taleblu said, but they had not been used until November’s attacks.
During Saturday’s larger-scale attack, multiple ballistic missiles and rockets launched by Iranian-backed militias targeted al-Asad, but most were intercepted by air defense systems there, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday. She said other munitions hit the base.
Al-Asad is a large air base in western Iraq where U.S. troops have trained Iraqi security forces and now coordinate operations to counter the militant Islamic State group.
